21st May

This time last year our cats took ill one after another starting with Chivers and the mammary gland that he impaled on the horrible anti bird stuff on 3b, Charlie had the abscess from hell which I never thought would heal and Minnie had a suspected broken pelvis when she fell trying to get up to, or down from, the Eagles Nest and finally Mr Boo had his awful breathing issue when we found out he has a hole between the nostrils.  This caused us a great deal of stress and some fairly hefty vets' bills.  These four are our babies and we cannot settle when they are missing or not behaving as they would do normally.  Our lockdown and curfew ended at 6.00am this morning and at that time I was trying to find Boris who had not put in an appearance all night which is very unusual as he likes to sleep against my legs.  We reckon he must have been locked in somewhere because he appeared shortly after most people would be getting up and was a bit bewildered and ravenous and then later during the day something upset Charlie.  He is normally fairly placid and although he play fights is generally pretty loving towards the others.  Today though this was not the case he was hissing and spitting at the others and I wondered if he had been in a fight or something and was injured but he was fine with me and would allow me to pick him up and cuddle him it was just the other cats he was upset with.  We decided to keep an eye on him and leave him to some peace and quiet before rushing him to the vets as he was clearly stressed out.

This week's challenge is Fabulous Things or Places, Real or Imagined which is a very general theme but I always try and put something in even if I am not really happy with it.  My paints are a bit hard to get to at the moment so I have some pencils that I have been using and my effort this week is a mermaid.  I don't know if I will have time for anything else but I have also chosen a photograph to enter too.

Although technically lockdown is over for individuals here in Cyprus that is not the case for other members of the group and so we have decided to review on a week by week basis whether the challenges continue and so there will be a new one next week which I think I might choose.  It is quite hard to find something that is inspiring to artists, photographers and children alike.

It was another hot day today although it is set to change from tomorrow and temperatures are supposed to reduce to something more like the norm.  I can't say I will be too upset because really has been far too hot for this early in the year - our bodies generally adjust week on week but this year no such luck it was more a baptism of fire!!!

John had a couple of things he wanted to get sorted today - one was to address the spinny top issue (the one which I polished).  The spinny top isn't spinning uniformly so making a noise.  Before it got too hot John went up on the roof and took it apart and reconstructed it - not before he dropped a million screws down into the shingle for me to find and throw back up to him.

His second little job was to try and turn one of our empty gin bottles into a vase using the old string and acetone system which we have used before but only on round bottles.  We worked out that the corners of this one were too thick for the top bit to snap off cleanly.  I am seriously considering buying John a kit for doing this because I think he would make all sorts of things from some of the lovely bottles we have accummulated.

Salad again tonight and I am loving this week's menu.  Tonight we had spicy satay beef .  I wasn't very hopeful that the sirloin steak would be tender but I left it to rest for a decent amount of time because it didn't have to be piping hot and it was lovely.